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French Hare Soup

A stew of hare pieces simmered with port wine, onions, herbs, and broth, then strained and seasoned.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 13 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and marjoram match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 2,225 recipes. Both carry terpineol, which smells pine, woody. The science ↓

French Hare Soup

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the hare

  1. Cut the hares into small pieces and place them in a stew pan.

  2. Add port wine, onions, parsley, bay leaf, thyme, sweet basil, marjoram, and mace.

  3. Simmer on the stove for 1 hour.

Make the soup

  1. Add boiling broth to cover the meat and simmer until soft enough to strain.

  2. Strain the mixture and soak the bread crumb in the strained liquid.

  3. Separate the bones from the meat and pound the meat in a mortar.

  4. Rub the meat with the liquid through a sieve.

  5. Season with pepper and coarse sea salt, and heat thoroughly without boiling.

  6. Optional: Add forcemeat balls made from the hare.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Thyme + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together2,225 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  2. Basil + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together688 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

  3. Parsley + thymetop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  4. Parsley + marjoramtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,979 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  5. Thyme + basiltop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together1,768 recipes

    Shared aroma: terpineol (pine, woody).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hares
Provide the meat that gives the soup its body and rich, gamey flavor.
Port wine
Adds sweetness and fruity depth to the broth.
Crumb of a 2-penny loaf
Soaked in the liquid, it thickens the soup and gives it a smooth body.
Onions
Release sweet, savory flavor into the broth as they simmer.

The step that matters

Heat thoroughly without boiling. Boiling a puréed meat soup can cause it to curdle, separate and turn grainy, and can toughen the meat proteins. Gentle heat keeps the texture smooth.

Swap the mace

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (port wine, onion, clove, parsley, thyme, basil, marjoram):

  1. Winter savoryfits better
  2. Allspicefits better
  3. Sagefits better
  4. Macethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against port wine, onion, clove, parsley, thyme, basil, marjoram. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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